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BAYLIS. Globalization of World Politics_-12 CHA...doc
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The 'Eastern Question'

Besides the 'German problem' the other main source of instability in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe was the so-called 'Eastern Question', which arose from the slow collapse of the Ottoman empire. The European great powers each took con­siderable interest in how the power vacuum that was spreading from the Balkans to the Middle East would be filled. But the peoples over whom the Ottoman dynasty had ruled were also keen to assert, in the age of nationalism, their right to self-rule. In the Bal­kans, rival national groups clashed in a series of wars, with the backing of various European great powers. Consequently, the Tsarist Russian empire (although itself in a state of terminal collapse) refused to watch impassively while Austro-Hungary threatened Rus­sia's fellow Slavs in Serbia after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. What might have been a localized incident quickly sparked a general war. The complicated alliance system built up over the previous two decades rapidly ensured that Austria-Hungary and Germany, on the one side, con­fronted Britain, France, and Russia on the other. The ensuing war was to last for over four years. Much of it was marked by a military stalemate—most vividly, and horrifically, epitomized by the trench-warfare which decimated a generation of young French, Brit­ish, and German men.

Box 3.3. The 'German problem'

Germany before unification

• Until 1871, 'Germany' did not exist in anything like the shape we know it today.

• 'Germany' was a collection of twenty-five states, ran­ging in size from small principalities to the economic­ally and militarily assertive Prussia with a population of some 30m. (Bavaria, the second largest, contained 5.5m.)

• Some ethnic Germans lived under the sovereignty of other states; as in Alsace-Lorraine, which was part of France, and Schleswig-Holstein, ruled by Denmark.

Unification

• The bringing together of these states, and the annex­ation of 'foreign' lands containing ethnic Germans, was the work of the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

• Three wars were fought to secure German unification, and to ensure that Prussia predominated to Austria's exclusion: against Denmark (1864) over Schleswig-Holstein; Austria-Hungary (1866); and France (1870) over Alsace-Lorraine.

Germany after unification

• For the first time in modern history, the centre of Europe was dominated by a single, vast state.

• Germany's population of nearly 67m. (by 1913) was second in size only to the Russian empire.

• Germany underwent rapid industrialization. Germany's coal, iron, and steel production (in the 1870s well below the UK's) outstripped Britain's by 1914

• From 1871 to 1914, the value of Germany's agricultural output doubled; industrial production quadrupled and overseas trade more than tripled.

• With such great reserves of territory, population, mili­tary, and Industrial strength, Germany had the capacity—and the inclination, many believed—for outward expansion. The birth of a unified Germany thus constituted the birth of 'the German problem', as far as other European states were concerned, by fun­damentally disrupting the balance of power in Europe. Other states were accordingly disposed to enter into alliances in order to prevent Germany from using Its central geo-strategic location and economic resources to achieve further territorial enlargement.

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